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Berwyn, IL —
Even for the academically capable, high school can be a difficult time for many teenagers.
Teachers and high school administrators often look for ways to help students cope and keep them out of trouble. Marissa Garcia, 24, a youth services coordinator at the Berwyn Pubic Library, recently has come across her own method.
Garcia teaches a bi-weekly teen writers group at the library, giving students a place to express their personal thoughts without fear of judgment — or worse yet, grading.
“Everybody has a story to tell. And there are so many people and so many different people to tell those stories,” Garcia said. “This is my way to help the kids I can reach.”
And Garcia's program is already reaping rewards with Berwyn teens.
Rebekah Tribble, a home-schooled 17 year old, was one of 30 young female writers nationwide sponsored by Teen Ink for a camp in New York City this summer based on her submissions from the teen writers group.
The group exhibits a sometimes-jarring mix of heartfelt quirkiness and pain: The teens’ official mascot is a stuffed pig named Conroy who wears hand-knit outfits, while half the group chose suicide as the topic for their latest story.
For some teens, writing provides an outlet for weighty issues they face as they enter adulthood.
“When you're a teenager, you can feel really helpless and when you write, there's always the possibility that you can affect the world and that you can reach somebody, anybody and even maybe express their ideas,” Rebekah explained.
The writers group, which started with just one student in 2009, now has four students that includes a cross-section of overachievers and at-risk — but promising — youths ages 14 to 18. The one issue that pulls them all together is a sense that their creative talents are underserved or even suppressed at school.
“I had to censor one of my stories today for a language arts project. It was really painful,” said John Stopka, a 14-year-old Freedom Middle School student and the newest participant in the group.
Although Garcia strives to make the group a low-pressure environment with no homework and few assignments, she realizes she's providing a free service that many schools cannot.
“Oftentimes, there's no time in the school day to concentrate on what we're doing here,” Garcia said. “There's a void and that's what I wanted to fill.”
Even for the academically capable, high school can be a difficult time for many teenagers.
Teachers and high school administrators often look for ways to help students cope and keep them out of trouble. Marissa Garcia, 24, a youth services coordinator at the Berwyn Pubic Library, recently has come across her own method.
Garcia teaches a bi-weekly teen writers group at the library, giving students a place to express their personal thoughts without fear of judgment — or worse yet, grading.
“Everybody has a story to tell. And there are so many people and so many different people to tell those stories,” Garcia said. “This is my way to help the kids I can reach.”
And Garcia's program is already reaping rewards with Berwyn teens.
Rebekah Tribble, a home-schooled 17 year old, was one of 30 young female writers nationwide sponsored by Teen Ink for a camp in New York City this summer based on her submissions from the teen writers group.
The group exhibits a sometimes-jarring mix of heartfelt quirkiness and pain: The teens’ official mascot is a stuffed pig named Conroy who wears hand-knit outfits, while half the group chose suicide as the topic for their latest story.
For some teens, writing provides an outlet for weighty issues they face as they enter adulthood.
“When you're a teenager, you can feel really helpless and when you write, there's always the possibility that you can affect the world and that you can reach somebody, anybody and even maybe express their ideas,” Rebekah explained.
The writers group, which started with just one student in 2009, now has four students that includes a cross-section of overachievers and at-risk — but promising — youths ages 14 to 18. The one issue that pulls them all together is a sense that their creative talents are underserved or even suppressed at school.
“I had to censor one of my stories today for a language arts project. It was really painful,” said John Stopka, a 14-year-old Freedom Middle School student and the newest participant in the group.
Although Garcia strives to make the group a low-pressure environment with no homework and few assignments, she realizes she's providing a free service that many schools cannot.
“Oftentimes, there's no time in the school day to concentrate on what we're doing here,” Garcia said. “There's a void and that's what I wanted to fill.”
Garcia, who has a bachelor’s degree in fiction writing from Columbia College and is studying for a master’s degree in library sciences at Dominican University, was an avid writer in her teens.
By encouraging the group to submit their work for publication, Garcia hopes to get the young writers to the next stage in their writing.
“In college, writing was no longer just recreation,” Garcia said. “I had to start looking at it less as a therapy and more of a way to communicate in order to tell stories to other people rather than just myself.”
The group meets for two hours each month, but there’s no in-session writing time. Students are expected to read and write assignments to the best of their ability on their own time, which Garcia estimated takes three hours every week.
For the students who’ve been studying with her the longest, she’s already noticed major strides in their writing — including being more open with what they’re willing to produce.
“For now, we're working mainly on ways to inspire ourselves,” Garcia told her students during a recent session. “If you're constantly limiting yourself, you are not going to get to all the places that you could.”
Meet Berwyn's teen authors
| Andrew Arcos, 18, Berwyn, Timothy Christian School in Elmhurst |
“I like writing a lot because I think it makes ordinary ideas that appear in life more extraordinary than they actually are. It's relaxing and it keeps you sharp. ... It helps to round me out as a person, not just sitting home and watching TV, but writing, composing and thinking.” |
| Rebekah Tribble, 17, Berwyn, home schooled |
“When I read particular authors, I get inspired and I can't help myself. It's my way of expressing my creativity and I feel like it communicates a part of me that I couldn't communicate verbally.” |
| Nick Steele, 17, Berwyn, Morton West |
“I started doing art when I was really young and something just clicked in my head where I wanted to write stories to go along with my art. Now, I'm evening out and writing more than I'm doing other art.” |
| John Stopka, 14, Berwyn, Freedom Middle School |
“I write specifically to express myself and show people what I'm really like because I feel like words can express the way I feel. When I write, it helps me release all the emotion that I'm feeling.” |
Check it out
The Teen Writers Group meets from 7 to 8 p.m. the first and third Thursday of every month in the second-floor community room of the Berwyn Public Library, 2701 Harlem Ave. There is no enrollment limitation or registration requirement for the free class. For more information, visit www.berwynlibrary.org or call (708) 795-8000.
